Policymaking by presumption

The Gateway Cities Journal

In 2002, Massachusetts voters went to the ballot box and passed an initiative requiring schools to deliver all instruction in English. While there wasn’t much evidence that this would improve learning, voters were still sold on the idea that professional educators didn’t know how to do their job; allowing students to learn math and other complex subjects in their native language while they acquired English was wrong, plain and simple.

After many years of pleading with legislators to reverse this flawed law, both the Senate and House passed bills recently loosening these restrictions so that teachers can go back to providing the best instructional approach they can find for students who are still learning English.

This sordid experience begs the question: what other things are we doing that hinder urban educators based on presumption, rather than objective analysis?

The state’s new accountability rating system tops the list. Last week the Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank in Washington, DC, released a report placing Massachusetts in the bottom tier of states on rating the performance of urban districts fairly.

States are updating their accountability ranking formulas for the next school year to comply with the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act. A who’s who list of education experts has urged them to do a better job producing school quality ratings that provide the public with apples-to-apples comparisons, adjusting for the widely varying make-up of students in schools and districts when assigning relative measures of performance. In redesigning the Massachusetts formula, policymakers have ignored this sound methodological advice.

Understandably, they want “all to mean all,” that is, all students should reach proficiency, no excuses. This sounds good in theory, but what about a high school where 30 percent of students arrived from foreign countries recently and don’t speak English well, or an elementary school where 20 percent of the students have learning disabilities or developmental delays making it difficult just to read the questions on the test? Expecting every student to score proficient or advanced on the MCAS at these schools is nonsensical.

Like the 2002 ballot measure, the Massachusetts accountability ranking formula takes an inflexible approach that discourages Gateway City educators and adds unnecessary stress to an already demanding job.

Because perceptions of school quality influence so much else in Massachusetts, this policy has far more profound consequences. By inaccurately rating the performance of urban public schools, we punish communities for being inclusive. We lower their property values and destabilize their neighborhoods. Families are much less likely to live in a dense urban area when we label the schools underperforming, so they move to suburbs restrictively zoned for so-called “good schools.” This inevitably drives up home values, which creates a drag on economic growth and intensifies widening income inequality.

With a victory on English-only instruction under their belt, it’s time Gateway City leaders train their energy on an education accountability system built to reinforce the harmful presumption that our inclusive urban schools are inferior places to learn.